


become / a speaking instrument

by KaworuMakino



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaworuMakino/pseuds/KaworuMakino
Summary: For Kaworu's birthday 2020. Kaworu awakens in the sea of Instrumentality.
Relationships: Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59





	become / a speaking instrument

The whole concept of Instrumentality was for humans to be able to connect with one another. Or rather, to become one another. To have all the walls between them torn down so that they might feel each other's thoughts, emotions, and pain as their very own. 

It wasn't a novel concept to me: it was similar to how I'd lived my life, to the very nature of it. I, who had memories of an entity who was at the same time "me" but yet not truly. 

What didn't make sense was that when humans achieved Instrumentality, I found myself among them. Within the higher evolution that felt primordial, the ocean of souls I could reach out to just by floating along through the waves. Arms, with hands used for touching, embracing, all within reach in the surf for me to brush up against and come to know. 

But, suddenly adrift with my consciousness returned to me, there were only two souls that concerned me. The first was my own. 

I knew how I had come to be. Not because SEELE had told me their theory of the events they set in motion yet failed to comprehend. No, I let them blabber on as if I did not remember the details of the life that wasn't mine but that now made up a part of me. 

I let them believe I knew no better, though I did. 

I came into existence when one being— the self who wasn't me, but was— came into contact with a human. My old body, that of the Adam before me, was separated from (not)me. I flowed into the limited confines of a human body, and in doing so merged with it into something new.

There was no other voice in the body's mind save my own. Nonsensical as it seemed, the vessel was truly mine and mine alone. It was as if my soul had melded with DNA itself and built a suitable form around itself. As if my container was paradoxically built only as I was poured into it. 

No matter. There I was. Unable to move for what felt like eternity, until suddenly I felt a flexing. A sensation I'd gone so long without that at first I couldn't recognize it. But I chased it nonetheless. Flexing. Fingers. Soon I realized that I could control my form, that it had grown to the point of being capable of motoring itself. That the brain had developed enough to be capable of actually housing my essence in such a way that I could see through the body's eyes and process external stimuli as myself. 

My self. Something different from Adam, I knew, and yet the same. I remembered his past existence, his hibernation, his awakening. But though I knew I was also made of human material, there was no human predecessor whose memories I could access. I felt like one soul contained in another creature's body, but morphed into a third being by the transference. 

Awake again to my state of being through Instrumentality, surrounded by other beings no longer separate from me, I turned my attention to the question of meaning. 

As I had grown, I was always under the watchful eye of old men who were self-serious and mysterious to each other but not to me. They, and the few other humans I encountered over the years, frequently raised the concept of life having a meaning, but they seemed to disagree about what that meaning was. It eluded them all. 

The question to me seemed irrelevant. I saw life as a matter of being, of simply being aware of what is. When I died, after all, I had ceased to know. And now, in some phantom state of life, I could once again perceive. That was enough. I knew my origins, and those of virtually everything else. I didn't feel much need to superimpose some supposedly deeper meaning on top of them. It seemed to me a silly question. 

Until I met the only other soul who ever truly mattered to me: Shinji Ikari. 

A boy my (the actual me, not Adam's) age with whom I'd looked up at ceilings in search of the world. With whom I'd played piano and brushed fingertips, felt the tactile reminders of living in the here and now, of what has since become the there and then. 

A boy who seemed at a loss for the definition of meaning. A boy who caused me to stop looking down on that uncertainty. A boy who stared deeply into my eyes with his own and awed me with the sight. 

I had understood humans in theory. They were sad, mad, happy, their emotions the different panes of revolving doors spinning, inevitably shifting until the final moment they ever moved or felt or knew: when they ceased being aware and ceased being. 

But when I spoke words of affection to Shinji he was taken aback. Like a small animal, used to being attacked, suddenly faced with an unexpected bowl of food. A hand outstretched carefully at eye level instead of from the terrors of above. 

Before, Shinji had my sympathy. My clueless mental exercise, my arrogant posturing at recognition. But the more we talked, the more he surprised me. 

He knew so little. He struggled so much. And yet he kept going. He understood the tragedy of the predicament he was in, and yet had the force of will to wish for something better. To imagine a way of being he had not yet experienced. Had never even seen proven to exist. 

And through that will, with that sense of imagination, he far surpassed me. Me, who had been born with knowledge of races and ancient spears and cells and souls the likes of which humans, after all their arrogance and inquiries, could still only guess at. 

I, too, was ignorant. I thought of myself as separate. As above them, even when I didn't realize that was what I thought. I believed I knew myself, and them. 

Until I saw his sad eyes peering into mine with a trembling hope for joy. Acceptance. 

And yet still I wasn't strong enough to disobey my orders. My circumstances. Could I have? I told myself the old men would kill me if I tried, but had I really thought that out? Searched for every possible option available to me?

Regardless of whether I was too submissive or cowardly, I acted out the part of a dutiful pawn. Drew toward my objective, knowing the other man would have to send Shinji after me. 

Would send him to stop me. Would send him to do exactly what I wanted him to do. 

And so, though there were thousands of pounds of steel between us, Shinji held me in his hand and squeezed. I felt warmth, and then ceased to be aware of anything at all. 

Until I woke up in the sea of souls, drifting. Pondering why I was among them. The logistics, the questions of species, of higher and lower powers. And then questions of deserving, of why I had been deemed worthy of reclaiming my consciousness. 

Adrift in red, I felt myself cry for the first time. Why had I been allowed into the sea of souls, scared and helpless and braver, more resolute than I ever had been?

I scarcely felt the moment the change happened. I looked up from my hand, covered in the novelty of my tears that I struggled to understand. Looked out at the waves. Peered in all directions over the horizon, only suddenly realizing there were no longer other hands. No other bodies or souls. 

I had drifted somewhere further away, or rather...they had drifted. I could no longer sense anyone save for myself. What had happened to the expanse of open hearts and minds? No matter how far away they were, I should have been able to sense them still. 

Unless...their walls had returned. Barriers dividing me from the rest of what was, whatever was and wherever it was. 

Soon, a far out wave appeared in the distance. Towering above me, at heights that would have seemed to any human as godlike. And that to me, whatever I was, also seemed godlike, regardless of what I thought of the concept of "God."

Before I knew it I was caught up in it, enveloped in cold, surrounded, and I ceased to be aware. For all I knew I ceased to be.

* * *

I hazily became aware of myself again through the feeling of warmth, of being enveloped in heat. Slowly, I opened my eyes to find the only other pair I'd ever cared about: 

Shinji's. 

"Kaworu!"

I felt a pressure on my chest. His hands were there atop one another, and I felt bits of water slip out of my mouth. My throat was sore. Had I been heaving? There was more water on the ground beside my head. 

I looked around. We were alone on a beach. I'd somehow washed up to wherever Shinji was, and he'd helped save me from drowning. 

Me? Capable of drowning? I began to sit up and...

"Kaworu!"

...I felt heat envelop me again as Shinji wrapped his arms around me, pressed his chest tight up against mine. 

"Kaworu!"

He was crying. I felt his body shake against me. Unsure, mimicking what I had seen humans do and hoping it worked, I brought my own arms up to wrap around his back as well. 

He twitched, then leaned into the touch as he kept crying into my shoulder. I squeezed him tight, hoping it wasn't too tight. 

"Kaworu..."

"Sh...Shinji, I..." I croaked, or mumbled, or something in-between. 

Shinji pulled back, looked me in the eyes. 

"S...sorry," he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "Did you say something?"

As his watery gaze peered down upon me, I smiled. Warmth. Enveloping. Feeling. 

"I'm saying, I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Sappho's "I took my lyre and said" poem.


End file.
